When the Floodwater Comes
by CherryBerry12
Summary: "She dreams of women's garments floating in a sea of murky green water, an awful clattering of teeth." A continuation of Kazumi's story after Tanjiro defeats the swamp demon, narrated by the unnamed girl Tanjiro saved.


**AN**: Thanks for checking this out! In case the summary wasn't clear enough, this takes place after episode 7-right after Tanjiro leaves the village where the swamp demon was, and how Kazumi and the woman (the story never gives her a name) who Tanjiro saved go on afterwards. Again, thanks for clicking!

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She wakes in the last place she can recall: the floor of her bedroom. Her body is cold—burning cold, numbing cold that radiates outward from her core. Several blankets have been laid over her; they do nothing to help. She had gone to sleep, she remembers, after putting her sister to bed. But what else?

She does not remember the man who sits at her bedside, legs tucked beneath him, his hands fisted so tight that the tendons in his arm stand out. When he realizes she's awake, his fist relaxes, and he takes a long, watery breath.

He stares down at her, his eyes wide and alarmed but the color of sun-bleached earth, the soft brown of the sturdy floorboards next to her head.

_Who…?_

He tells her his name is Kazumi, and that he is there to look after her.

_After… me? _She gazes up at his bruises, a black-eye, a swollen cheek. He speaks with the same accent of her village—though she does not recognize him, he could not have come from too far.

Kazumi only shakes his head, holding up his hands as if to ward off any gratitude—_The demon slayer_, he says, _it was the demon slayer's_ _order, that I look out for you. That's all I've done._

A demon slayer—and a demon. Spare memories and half-aborted thoughts slosh around her skull like brackish water, but there is enough remaining that she knows he has spoken the truth. It is its hands she remembers with the greatest detail—she raises one hand to her mouth, feels the horror of it twist in her gut. Her skin is soft where the demon's had been rough, smooth where the demon had been scaled like a snake.

_Miss…? _Kazumi starts, his brows furrowing.

The missing girls, the demon, her bedroom—all this she remembers. She looks back up at Kazumi, and she screams.

She expects Kazumi to leave, his task complete, but he does not. Her room is flooded by visitors—her mother, who cries and clings to her, her father who pumps Kazumi's hand and can't seem to stop thanking him.

Kazumi's words are drowned out by her mother's sobs—_I only brought her back—it was the demon slayer—he said— _

Her sister crawls into her lap and grabs fat fistfulls of her hair, burying her head into her shoulder. _Momma was so worried—all of those girls… _

When they leave (and Kazumi remains, uncertain of his place but unwilling to go, her parents too polite to ask it of him) she stands on unsteady legs and locks herself in the bathroom, holds her hands against the door and realizes it, like any other door in the house, would still be incapable of protecting her from demons.

_I wish to be alone_. It is a request—not a command. It is the only way she knows how to speak to a man.

_I said I would look after you,_ Kazumi answers softly. There is a drawn out pause where she hears only her breathing, her sharp almost-gasps, and Kazumi's fidgeting from the other side of the door. _I just—that is all, I swear. Please allow me to stay. The demon slayer, it was his request—_ She allows another silence to fall, feels it settle between them both like a neglectful layer of dust.

Kazumi's breaths come quick and ragged, and she wonders if he's begun to cry. _Please—_he begs of her, a low whine rising in his voice, and then she knows for certain he is sobbing. _My fiancee is dead. Please allow me to stay. _

She does not answer Kazumi, but backs away from the door, and begins to shed her sleepwear.

She runs a hot bath and holds her hand under the faucet, resting on the edge of the basin as the water runs hot, then hotter. It spills over her hands in glassy-clear streams, though she half-expects it to turns inky-black, wonders if the water might take from her body what the demon had impressed upon it.

She can imagine its territory when she closes her eyes—fetid water clogging her nostrils, the eerie green glow of the moon through the bog. When she opens her eyes, there is still nothing—her discarded clothes, folded neatly on the stool next to her, are as clean as they were when she undressed for bed. One sleeve is torn, though she cannot recall how.

There is a candle lit. She lights several more.

Kazumi waits on the other side of the door, never attempting to speak with her except for asking, tentatively, _are you still okay in there? _when she dips one hand into the water. The surface ripples and, for a moment, no. She is not okay.

The feel of something like oil is still heavy on her skin, and yet when she pulls her hand from the water that is all there is—water. Her hand comes out clean, nothing monstrous or unexpected to drag her back down into the basin.

After her pause runs too long, she tells Kazumi, _yes, I am fine_, because there is nothing physically wrong with her, Kazumi is a stranger, and she is certain this will pass. Demon attacks are not uncommon. She will not be the first woman to survive one.

Still, there remains a cold that sits in her bones; the water is steaming, fogging up the single mirror she has, and when she sinks down into it her skin turns bright red. She soaks in it until her nerves throb, pulls her knees to her chest and weeps as quietly as possible, but the cold does not leave her.

Kazumi does not leave her.

She says _yes_ again when Kazumi asks if she is okay, but after the water goes cold she drains the tub and stands, shivering and wet, as she refills it. It is not as hot as the first time but she steps into it again, clinging tightly to the rim of the basin so that she does not slip. It is purgative relief she seeks, to sweat out the sickness in her body, to remove the cold by force if need be. There is something within her that must go—her skin is clean and the water is clean, and the glow from the dozens of candles around her is reflected in the soft golden droplets that slide down her bare arms.

It is sunlight, she knows, and not soft candlelight that will keep demons at bay.

_I would only like to know that you are still there,_ Kazumi says from the other side of the door. _That's all I want._

Eventually there is no more hot water to be added to the basin. She stands, wet and cold, for several seconds before realizing she had neglected to bring a fresh set of clothes - or a towel, for that matter - into the bathroom with her.

_I am coming out,_ she announces, _but you cannot look at me_. She re-enters her room, yesterday's robe pulled loosely around her. Her unbound, dripping hair leaves wet patches over her chest and back but Kazumi averts his eyes dutifully, covering them so she can be doubly sure.

He is unarmed—he bears no sword or quiver, no axe like the men who live and fight in the forests.

_What_, she asks, pulling a fresh set of clothes from her drawers, sneaking glances back at him to ensure he is staying true to his word, _do you believe you could still protect me from? _

Kazumi's back straightens, and though he again hesitates, he does not back down from the challenge. _I don't know yet_, he admits slowly, _but I was told—the demon slayer, it was his command. I will look after you_. He says it as he might say a litany, a prayer. She wonders if it is all he is capable of repeating.

He breathes again, eyes still closed. His whole body sinks with the force of his exhale, and she scurries back into the bathroom. With the door between them again, she offers the only comfort she can manage: _There is nothing to be done now. The demon is gone._

Kazumi's answer is quicker this time: _But did you forget it?_

When she dreams, she dreams of falling, of being pulled backwards into the floorboards of her room by arms drawn around her neck like a noose and hands that cover her mouth, an unseen force that drags her into gelatinous darkness, blackness so thick around her that her flailing arms cut through it, sink into it.

She dreams of women's garments floating in a sea of murky green water, an awful clattering of teeth.

When she shudders awake in the night, Kazumi is always there—his swollen cheek heals and his black eye fades, and the demon slayer's final charge ought to lose its power over him but Kazumi remains.

_I'm going to look after you,_ Kazumi swears, somehow emboldened by her weaknesses. _No matter what. _

He sleeps in the hallway outside her door, dutiful as a dog, and when she gasps and writhes in her sleep he - very much a human - knocks once politely, then slides open her bedroom door to lie next to her, never touching her as a lover might, never once attempting to invade the space under her blankets, but curling beside her like an anxious child, his hand seeking hers in the night.

His distance is respectful but—but his body is warm, and it leaches the cold from her bones.

Her mother and father eye him closely, speak in hushed tones of a vanished woman, a former fiancee, but they say nothing to Kazumi directly. She does not know if it would make a difference—if it is possible to scare Kazumi away. What is there to be said to a man in his grief, who clings so tightly to the little that remains?

His tremors come more often than hers, are more violent. _You slept,_ he tells her once, unprompted. His body is next to hers but, somehow, they are barely touching. His hand squeezes hers, tighter every night. _When the demon slayer fought—you slept in my arms the whole time. You were so peaceful and I—I was so scared. _

_The demon is gone_, she reminds him.

_Yes. _He turns onto his back, staring up at her ceiling. _But I can't forget it. _

She wonders how any person could.

The moon hangs higher than it once had, and the nights that pass are longer than they've ever been. When she throws open the curtains to her room the moonlight fills it, casting everything in the room—her bed, the floorboards, Kazumi's lax, sleeping body—in a pearly glow.

She stands by her window now, clothed only in her nightdress, and lets the moonlight wash over her. It is clean like water, pure like water—real water, the kind that might come from her faucet or the canal around their village. The hanging lights that are strung from nearby roofs sway in the fall breeze, but it is a clear night, and she can plainly see the moon, round and full with pinpricks of stars behind it.

She does not quite understand why it is the sun, and not the moon, that is capable of combating demons, but still she leaves her curtain open.

Kazumi shivers when she lies back down next to him, but she has blankets for them both.

She returns to her daily routine like filleted fish returns to water. Nothing has changed except for her. The house she leads Kazumi through is the same house of her childhood; the floorboards creak in the right places, but it is her feet that are now clumsy when she walks across them. The cups she takes down from the kitchen shelves bear the same shape they always had; it is only that her hands tremble now when she holds them.

The walls around them seem so much thinner now. The doors are so much lighter when she closes them behind her.

When she takes her tea Kazumi follows her into the sitting room of her father's house as if led by a leash, though he keeps to himself when her little sister joins them. Her sister picks at her breakfast, says very much while she and Kazumi say very little. When she is finished, she bows politely to them both before scurrying away, gone to join the other children.

Kazumi waits for her cue, one of his hands always hidden away somewhere in his robes.

Her parents no longer watch him, no longer seem to question why he is there or why he does not return to his father's home. He is so quiet, so constant, that she begins to wonder if they forget his presence altogether.

It is difficult to say whether or not she minds him. He is patient through her slow mornings, somber through their long afternoons.

When she sits to take her tea Kazumi stands, retrieves a jar of honey before she even needs to ask. He smiles softly while she adds one teaspoon and then one more into her cup, though she wonders if he knows the honey is new to her, that it is something she uses to transition into her new, strange life. She wonders if Kazumi too cannot eat or drink as he once had, if his meals now taste of ash, of smoke.

She brings the cup to her mouth and with the honey her tea is viscous and coarse. The sediment that sits on her tongue tastes more of silt than tea leaves, more bitter than sweet.

Kazumi watches her carefully. _If you would like, _he says, already standing to walk back to the kitchen, _I can brew you another cup._

_I want you to tell me about her_, she tells Kazumi at night, his thumb tracing the bumps of her knuckles. _About the woman you loved._

Kazumi's hand tightens around hers. _The demon slayer—he said I would need to keep on living. And I have. _

He rarely offers more than that, and yet every night he is there beside her: waiting to save her from long-dead creatures, perhaps believing it will bring him absolution. Perhaps believing he is still, somehow, in need of absolution.

Kazumi says very little of the man who slayed the demon, but he tells her this: _his hands—if you had seen the calluses on his hands, you would understand. _There is unmasked wonder in his voice when he says it, unquestioning respect.

She cares very little about the demon slayer, not in the least because they had never met—Kazumi, however, is solid and warm next to her on the floor, and yet the demon slayer's hands are the only hands he truly offers to her.

No other men come to call on her—there is only Kazumi, rubbing the sleep from his eyes in the morning, and waiting respectfully at the threshold of her room at night.

The village mourns the women who were taken; their hair pins and bows are laid out with food offerings, gifts to their spirits, and after a time they disappear. She, who was taken and returned, who was brought back from depths below the village, is offered nothing. She is lucky to have survived.

Before the demon, there had been three men - three well-respected, highly courteous men - who had called on her, who had knelt before her father and begged the chance to court her. Now there are none, no men aside from Kazumi, who bows his head before her father but asks nothing of him, makes no offers or proposals.

Confronted by her, the men of the village only gaze downward, avoiding her anger. _We can't,_ they all say. _Kazumi—you're Kazumi's woman now. It wouldn't be right._

_I am no one's woman_, she tells them, and the truth of it is slippery, narrowly fits into her grasp.

She is no one's woman—there is no man, Kazumi included, who will have her.

She is no one's woman—there is no being, no man, demon, or demon slayer, who can keep her. Isn't it true? That a demon himself had stolen her, and that she lives to speak of it?

(None of them say it, but she reads the concern in the slopes of their eyebrows, the strange curves of their lips—_who has she become?_ _What has the demon done to her, that she would address us so directly?_)

She had been, before the demon, a woman with three suitors.

She is no man's woman, but she is still Kazumi's woman. He does not leave her side.

He waits in the morning to greet her, head bowed respectfully. He sits outside her door while she bathes.

He does this the first morning and the next, and after enough mornings his initial anxiousness bleeds out of him. He learns to read her silences, takes his cues from the tilt of her head, the quirk of her lips.

She leaves her father's house to shop and Kazumi accompanies her; she browses through stores and he waits at her back, never allowing her to stray further than his arm's reach. Kazumi falls into step behind her as if there had never been a time where they were not a pair—when she breathes, she can hear Kazumi exhale.

(_Right into thin air_, she overhears a woman in town saying, a hand covering her mouth when they pass. _They say she disappeared right into thin air._)

_There is no one my parents trust more than you_, she tells Kazumi one morning as she's pinning back her hair, taming errant strands with a ribbon. Her hair was long when the demon took her—down past her shoulders. It is longer still now, falls to her mid-back, almost to her waist. It takes even more of her dull, hidden pins to secure, but still Kazumi waits by her side and watches her twist and coax the hairs that do not sit properly.

His eyes wander when she slides in an ornamental pearl-tipped pin at the end—his eyes always do. This is something he cannot bear to watch, and until she finishes his eyes roam over the floorboards, linger at the door. She catches glimpses of the bow he hides in his robes, the dark red ribbon he curls around his fingers and squeezes when he cannot bear to watch her.

She hears no man in the village attempt to force a title onto Kazumi—there is no woman who can claim him, no matter how much she might want to.

_You are always here_, she says by way of explanation. _My father would not refuse you, so why do you not ask?_

Kazumi says nothing, but the hands inside his robe betray him.

She loses her temper—it is very impolite of her.

There are so few of them left now, so few women her age who survived the demon, and she is now twice the survivor: their weddings come and go and she is still unmarried, unbetrothed.

Kazumi stalks her through the village, always one hand hidden in his robes, holding the other woman's bow. He does not ask for her hand. He does not ask anything of her, only that she allow him to remain.

At night they rest beneath the same blankets, and her hands are the ones he grasps when his dreams keep him awake. He will come no further. She undresses before him—he looks away.

She believes, having no other explanation at hand, that he is simply too polite.

His hands are always near hers—he does not resist when she pulls them closer. He stiffens, and his hand twitches when she guides one over her clothed breast. The women her age are wives, they are mothers. She is no man's woman, no man's partner.

_Like this, Kazumi-san, _she tells him. _I will not stop you. _

Kazumi gapes at her, his mouth gone wide like a fish's. He jerks his hand away. _The demon slayer said—his last words to me, I have to look after you._ He rolls over, lies with his back to her. She can see his cheeks redden, even in the dark.

His strength is not the strength of a demon or a demon slayer, but that of a man: he hesitates when she moves with him, pressing her chest against his turned back. She wraps her arms around him as his wife would, feels his beating heart under her palm. _The demon slayer is not here, but I am._

She doesn't know if demons can create curses, but she has no other word to describe the compulsion that rules Kazumi. She says, _please_, and again he refuses her.

_I will not,_ he finally says, gently removing her hands from his body. _That is—I am not here for that. _

She props herself up on one arm, leans over to hiss in his ear. _Then what will it be?_ _You will not have me, and you will not let me go. You have trapped me_.

Kazumi shrinks away from her, turns over again and wobbles to his feet, leaving their shared blankets behind. He blinks down at her as if somehow seeing her for the first time, his eyes bright like glass.

_I— _He hesitates, then grasps the front of his shirt, taking in a long, stuttering breath. He bows to her, low and respectful. _I apologize for what I have done. Forgive me, _he says, then slides open the door to her room and leaves.

Kazumi does not return in the morning. She drinks her bitter tea alone.

She lies awake at night, empty-handed. Her father's house is still, her room quiet without Kazumi's breathing beside her. When her parents or sister move about the house she hears them—their light footsteps padding down the halls, the gentle glide of doors they close behind them. Only sometimes do they pause outside her room before turning back the way they came.

She had not heard the demon the night it came for her.

Kazumi does not return, but the demon does not either.

Sleep will not come for her in Kazumi's absence.

She is restless; she is reckless.

She slips out of her door and walks the streets at night barefoot, her robe loose around her shoulders to feel the cool night air on her neck, gentle breezes in the summer that leave kisses along her jaw. It is a coldness she embraces, an iciness that dries her tears before they can so much as leak out one eye.

It is terrible. It is liberating.

There is no danger she fears—the moon is high and the nights are long and there is no one afoot in the village so late at night, no paths that will cross hers. The few that do—they are men who avoid her, men who pull their hats low and shrink away from her in fear.

It has been years but she still hears warnings from her elders, that it is not safe to be out of doors at night, that this is when demons are about.

She knows, much better than they do, that a closed door will not keep a demon at bay.

The men in town say now that she is a wild thing, that she has become feral, half-demon herself. They pass her in the daylight with wary eyes but she does not burn before them. The other women do not speak to her, and her mother has resigned herself to defeated sighs, no longer questions the tears along the hem of her robe, the smooth, round pebbles she finds in its pockets.

The women who were born with her begin to age in ways she does not—their weddings pass and their first and second children appear in their arms, swaddled in blankets that hide all but bare traces of their tiny mouths, their squinting eyes. A woman dies in childbirth, but not her—demon-held and demon-marked, the only man to come into her bed had lain beside her and fumbled for her hand in the dark.

The demon made her mortal; the demon made her immortal. She cannot decide which it is but wonders if it could be both. Demon-kissed, demon-blessed—her life had been the demon's to take but the demon could not take it from her. There is still no death to claim her.

She is eighteen, she is nineteen: there is no man who will have her. There is only one man who she wants. When she walks the late-night streets of her village, clouds of fog curl around her feet and fade away and her robe becomes wet with dew. She is alone.

_You do not go out at night_, Kazumi announces one morning, returned to her front door. She recognizes it as an order. _I heard you were—that you… What you are doing is not allowed. _He is insistent, his finger pointed sternly at her. It is Kazumi's best impression of a domineering man.

She fears no demon and she fears no man; she take no orders from either. Her indignation overcomes her joy in seeing him, but only by fractions of a degree.

_Speak to me_, she demands, because this is the one thing Kazumi will not do for her. _Tell me what it is you want, and I will give it to you. _A sacrifice, a blessing—something to set Kazumi at peace. Something that will allow her to keep him, to free him from the dead woman's grasp.

Kazumi's hands betray him; they always do. When she places her hands on his shoulders and leans into him she presses against his arm, tucked into his robe, solid like a wall between them.

She slips out her window that night, silent enough that Kazumi, again sleeping by her door, does not hear her leave. It is the ghost of the dead woman who keeps him there—it is not her concern.

She knows no shame, and she knows no fear: when she returns in the morning she walks in through the front door of her father's house and does not attempt to hide what she has done.

Kazumi is awake, waiting for her.

_You do not go out at night,_ he repeats when she makes to step past him, his arm stretched across the sliding door of her home like a bar. Under her slit-eyed glare, he falters—not a demon, not a demon slayer, but a man. He drops his arm. _You do not go out—not without me. _

She finds that option much more palatable.

The next night he follows her onto the lamplit streets, clinging to her as much as she clings to him.

He does not command her, but only once takes her hand and holds her back. _Not that way,_ he says, pulling her even closer, his other hand wrapping around her back. _Never that way._

They eat less during the day, conduct their business at night. Kazumi sits with her by the canal's edge and together they wait for sunset, only shuddering when the waves crash against the wall and wet his legs.

_I am starving,_ she tells him, and perhaps it is intentional that he finds the narrowest meaning to her words.

Kazumi rummages in the pack he carries, ever responsible, and offers her a plum, warm from his hands. He only falters a little when she takes it, their fingers barely touching.

When she bites into it, the juice runs down her wrist and her chin thick like blood but still sweet on her tongue, the flesh soft and waxy-smooth. It tastes exactly as a plum ought to taste.

Kazumi watches her eat, and though he has brought food enough for himself, it is hunger she believes she sees in his eyes.

_Satoko,_ Kazumi eventually says, though by now she has learned the other woman's name, whispers it to herself some nights if only to wonder—who had Satoko been that Kazumi will not forget her? His first love, his last—years dead and his hands still reach for her.

_Her name was Satoko, and we were engaged._

She and Kazumi sleep through much of the day, prowl the streets of their village at night. She takes his hand and leads him through dark gardens, over moonlit bridges, great clouds rising between them when she laughs into the night air.

There is no man she will have but Kazumi, Kazumi alone who had known the demon.

Mortal, human Kazumi—not a demon or a demon slayer, his eyes beautiful and round, the color of milk tea in the moonlight, but there is no trick to them; Kazumi has never shown her a side of himself that was not honest, that was not true.

_I want you to kiss me,_ she tells him. If she were a man, maybe she would command him to do it. _There is no man but you—no man who can have me. _

He hesitates still, but she holds him firmly by his robe, fisting her hands in it. _Will you let it take everything from you? Is this truly what the demon-slayer commanded you to do?_

Kazumi shakes his head, and his hands betray him—they find her hips, pull her body closer to his. _I will never ask you to forget her, _she tells Kazumi, because she knows such things cannot be forgotten, that her sandals will hesitate over every dark puddle she comes across, that the ground will never feel as steady beneath her feet as it ought to.

She melts into him—the demon had been cold, the demon had slipped up from beneath her and had stolen her, but Kazumi is solid, Kazumi is warm, and when he slides her robe from her shoulders his soft lips along her throat are nothing like the demon's might have been.

His hands are never as harsh as he'd described the demon slayer's as being, his nails are light and blunt when he tugs her robe further down. He falls back against a tree and takes her with him, sliding down the trunk with her in his lap. She leans back and takes fistfulls of grass in her hands, feels the dirt still and solid beneath her palms.

It is no marriage—no betrothal or engagement, no promise to the other, no blessing from her father, but there is power in it, a binding of souls.

She tears the pin from her hair and tosses it, doesn't care enough to watch where it lands. Finding it again will be a problem for another time, but the demon's greatest gift to her was the instant moment she lives in—there is nothing in the future that she cannot wait to find. She cannot change her past. Her hair tumbles past her shoulders like the feral woman the village men believe her to be, but Kazumi wraps the strands of it around his fingers when he pulls her down to kiss him.

Kazumi's hips between her thighs and Kazumi's hands threaded into her hair calm the rocking in her mind, burn away any cold that might have still been trapped in her body. Her robe bunches up around her waist immodestly but there is no one there to see it—no one but Kazumi. When his lips meet hers, she tilts her head to meet him—he does not devour her but savors the press of his lips to hers, extends the moment infinitely, assures her that he will never leave.

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**AN: **Again, thanks so much for reading, commenting, favoriting, etc.! Thanks for giving this story a chance :)


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